Stephen King - The Dark Tower

The two of them hiled the trio across the way, then approached the wide fumed-oak railing and looked down. The room below might have been the capacious library of some richly endowed gentlemen’s club in London. Softly glowing lamps, many with genuine Tiffany shades, stood on little tables or shone on the walls (oak-paneled, of course). The rugs were the most exquisite Turkish. There was a Matisse on one wall, a Rembrandt on another…and on a third was the Mona Lisa . The real one, as opposed to the fake hanging in the Louvre on Keystone Earth. A man stood before it with his arms clasped behind him. From up here he looked as though he were studying the painting — trying to decipher the famously enigmatic smile, maybe — but Pimli knew better. The men and women holding magazines looked as though they were reading, too, but if you were right down there you’d see that they were gazing blankly over the tops of their McCall’s and their Harper’s or a little off to one side. An eleven- or twelve-year-old girl in a gorgeous striped summer dress that might have cost sixteen hundred dollars in a Rodeo Drive kiddie boutique was sitting before a dollhouse on the hearth, but Pimli knew she wasn’t paying any attention to the exquisitely made replica of Damli at all.

Thirty-three of them down there. Thirty-three in all. At eight o’clock, an hour after the artificial sun snapped off, thirty-three fresh Breakers would troop in. And there was one fellow — one and one only — who came and went just as he pleased. A fellow who’d gone under the wire and paid no penalty for it at all…except for being brought back, that was, and for this man, that was penalty enough.

As if the thought had summoned him, the door at the end of the room opened, and Ted Brautigan slipped quietly in. He was still wearing his tweed riding cap. Daneeka Rostov looked up from the dollhouse and gave him a smile. Brautigan dropped her a wink in return. Pimli gave Finli a little nudge.

Finli: ( I see him )

But it was more than seeing. They felt him. The moment Brautigan came into the room, those on the balcony — and, much more important, those on the floor — felt the power-level rise. They still weren’t completely sure what they’d gotten in Brautigan, and the testing equipment didn’t help in that regard (the old dog had blown out several pieces of it himself, and on purpose, the Master was quite sure). If there were others like him, the low men had found none on their talent hunts (now suspended; they had all the talent they needed to finish the job). One thing that did seem clear was Brautigan’s talent as a facilitator, a psychic who was not just powerful by himself but was able to up the abilities of others just by being near them. Finli’s thoughts, ordinarily unreadable even to Breakers, now burned in Pimli’s mind like neon.

Finli: ( He is extraordinary )

Pimli: ( And, so far as we know, unique Have you seen the thing )

Image: Eyes growing and shrinking, growing and shrinking.

Finli: ( Yes Do you know what causes it )

Pimli: ( Not at all Nor care dear Finli nor care That old )

Image: An elderly mongrel with burdocks in his matted fur, limping along on three legs.

( has almost finished his work almost time to )

Image: A gun, one of the hume guards’ Berettas, against the side of the old mongrel’s head.

Three stories below them, the subject of their conversation picked up a newspaper (the newspapers were all old, now, old like Brautigan himself, years out of date), sat in a leather-upholstered club chair so voluminous it seemed almost to swallow him, and appeared to read.

Pimli felt the psychic force rising past them and through them, to the skylight and through that, too, rising to the Beam that ran directly above Algul, working against it, chipping and eroding and rubbing relentlessly against the grain. Eating holes in the magic. Working patiently to put out the eyes of the Bear. To crack the shell of the Turtle. To break the Beam which ran from Shardik to Maturin. To topple the Dark Tower which stood between.

Pimli turned to his companion and wasn’t surprised to realize he could now see the cunning little teeth in the Tego’s weasel head. Smiling at last! Nor was he surprised to realize he could read the black eyes. Taheen, under ordinary circumstances, could send and receive some very simple mental communications, but not be progged. Here, though, all that changed. Here—

— Here Finli o’ Tego was at peace. His concerns

( hinky-di-di )

were gone. At least for the time being.

Pimli sent Finli a series of bright images: a champagne bottle breaking over the stern of a boat; hundreds of flat black graduation caps rising in the air; a flag being planted on Mount Everest; a laughing couple escaping a church with their heads bent against a pelting storm of rice; a planet — Earth — suddenly glowing with fierce brilliance.

Images that all said the same thing.

“Yes,” Finli said, and Pimli wondered how he could ever have thought those eyes hard to read. “Yes, indeed. Success at the end of the day.”

Neither of them looked down at that moment. Had they done, they would have seen Ted Brautigan — an old dog, yes, and tired, but perhaps not quite as tired as some thought — looking up at them.

With a ghost of his own smile.

There was never rain out here, at least not during Pimli’s years, but sometimes, in the Stygian blackness of its nights, there were great volleys of dry thunder. Most of the Devar-Toi’s staff had trained themselves to sleep through these fusillades, but Pimli often woke up, heart hammering in his throat, the Our Father running through his mostly unconscious mind like a circle of spinning red ribbon.

Earlier that day, talking to Finli, the Master of Algul Siento had used the phrase hinky-di-di with a self-conscious smile, and why not? It was a child’s phrase, almost, like allee-allee-in-free or eenie-meenie-minie-moe .

Now, lying in his bed at Shapleigh House (known as Shit House to the Breakers), a full Mall’s length away from Damli House, Pimli remembered the feeling — the flat-out certainty —that everything was going to be okay; success assured, only a matter of time. On the balcony Finli had shared it, but Pimli wondered if his Security Chief was now lying awake as Pimli himself was, and thinking how easy it was to be misled when you were around working Breakers. Because, do ya, they sent up that happy-gas. That good-mind vibe.

And suppose…just suppose, now…someone was actually channeling that feeling? Sending it up to them like a lullabye? Go to sleep, Pimli, go to sleep, Finli, go to sleep all of you good children…

Ridiculous idea, totally paranoid. Still, when another double-boom of thunder rolled out of what might still be the southeast — from the direction of Fedic and the Discordia, anyway — Pimli Prentiss sat up and turned on the bedside lamp.

Finli had spoken of doubling the guard tonight, both in the watchtowers and along the fences. Perhaps tomorrow they might triple it. Just to be on the safe side. And because complacency this close to the end would be a very bad thing, indeed.

Pimli got out of bed, a tall man with a hairy slab of gut, now wearing blue pajama pants and nothing else. He pissed, then knelt in front of the toilet’s lowered lid, folded his hands, and prayed until he felt sleepy. He prayed to do his duty. He prayed to see trouble before trouble saw him. He prayed for his Ma, just as Jim Jones had prayed for his as he watched the line move toward the tub of poisoned Kool-Aid. He prayed until the thunder had died to little more than a senile mutter, then went back to bed, calm again. His last thought before drifting off was about tripling the guard first thing in the morning, and that was the first thing he thought of when he woke to a room awash in artificial sunlight. Because you had to take care of the eggs when you were almost home.